Moroccan pimps sexually exploit migrant children in Ceuta apartments
Police detect properties in Ceuta used to prostitute girls who arrived in the mass influx in July, offering them food and accommodation in exchange.
Network of sexual exploitation targets migrant girls in Ceuta with promises of food and shelter
Police have identified several apartments in Ceuta, owned by citizens of Moroccan origin, where underage migrant girls are being sexually exploited. The victims arrived in the autonomous city during the mass influx in late July. El Mundo reports that the severity of the situation has led to the deployment of a specialist team from the Central Unit for Networks of Illegal Immigration and Document Falsification (UCRIF) to take charge of the investigation.
According to police investigations, criminal gangs targeted the girls once they had crossed the border and were already on Spanish territory, taking advantage of their extremely vulnerable situation. The mechanism detected involves, in some cases, an apparently basic offer: food and a place to sleep. Under this guise, Moroccan pimps move minors to apartments and villas belonging to citizens of Ceuta to force them to engage in prostitution.
Investigators have begun to detect a growing number of properties with these characteristics. Police are now seeking to determine who is behind these networks, what their true scale is, and how many minors could be victims of this activity.
Profile of victims and scope of investigation
Police concern is explained, in part, by the profile of potential victims: minors, immigrants and, in many cases, without family or social networks capable of protecting them. Their situation makes them a particularly vulnerable target for those seeking to exploit their helplessness. Arrival in Ceuta, far from ending the risk they face, can become the beginning of a new cycle of exploitation.
UCRIF officers deployed to the city are focusing their efforts on identifying the apartments used, the persons managing them, and the connections that may exist between those offering accommodation to minors and organisations dedicated to their exploitation. The stated objective is to prevent these locations from becoming established as stable structures before they can be dismantled.
According to investigators, the networks do not require large infrastructures to operate. It is sufficient to have a property, offer shelter and food to a young person who lacks alternatives, and then exploit their situation of dependence. For this reason, officers are working to locate and dismantle these points preventively. In addition to identifying the places where exploitation allegedly takes place, it is essential to locate the minors and guarantee their protection.
Migration crisis at breaking point
The sexual exploitation of migrant minors thus becomes a new facet of the migration crisis affecting Ceuta. The situation adds an additional layer of gravity to a city that had already been functioning at the limit of its resources for weeks.
The police operation is accumulating extraordinary pressure. Officers not only have to respond to migration pressure at the border and on the streets, but also investigate crimes that occur, arrest those responsible, hold the arrested persons, and transfer them to courts for presentation to judicial authority.
The General Council of the Judiciary itself has agreed to strengthen the courts in Ceuta in response to the increase in complaints and proceedings stemming from the crisis. The overload, El Mundo notes, is not affecting only the Security Forces and Bodies. Thousands of immigrants remain awaiting a solution whilst the city's public services continue to be subjected to extraordinary pressure.
The fear among officers of the National Police, Civil Guard and Army is that this situation will continue and that the exceptional circumstances will eventually become the norm. The Ceuta crisis, they warn, cannot be resolved simply by temporarily increasing shifts or sending units for a few days.
Ambush on soldiers at Benzú
In the early hours of last Thursday, a group of between 30 and 40 foreign men ambushed four soldiers from the Regulares Group heading to their usual surveillance point in the Benzú area. They were patrolling in an unarmoured vehicle. "They were not armed or equipped with proper protective equipment," a soldier deployed in Ceuta told El Mundo. The incident resulted in 12 arrests; a judge has already expelled 11 of them after being presented to the courts by the National Police.
Source: El Mundo